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A teenager from the USA wins first Gold medal: Winter Olympic 2018

These thoughts were still present after Sunday's final, won by American Redmond Gerard, as McMorris said he was just pleased to be healthy and riding once again.

Red Gerard put the red in "red, white and blue" Sunday by beating two Canadians to give the US its first gold medal of the Pyeongchang Games.

It was the United States' first gold at the Pyeongchang Games and Gerard made the most of it.

Not a bad prospect for a guy who first stepped into a snowboard for fun, not glory. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he did not find it easy to do a lot of snowboarding. He is the sixth of seven children; he has four brothers and two sisters.

The spectacle of the opening ceremony of the 2018 Pyeongchang Games was bright, shiny and memorable, but those theatrics had nothing on 17-year-old American snowboarder Red Gerard.

"I can't believe I got to land my run", said Gerard.

"I was jerking around with tickets". I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't have more to give today. "I just look for different lines", he said, draped in an American flag after dozens of interviews with worldwide media at the base of the slopestyle course. "I'm pretty sure I saw a video of them shotgunning beers at 8:30 a.m., so I'm pretty sure they are doing just fine". It took me an extra year to graduate high school and I didn't really see secondary education as an option. And it was surreal.

"Once I found out that I at least got third, I mean - that's next level".

But first, what you didn't miss, events that didn't happen because of the high winds: Men's downhill skiing, which was postponed to Thursday, and women's slopestyle snowboard qualifiers, which were canceled. When his family moved to Colorado, Gerard's career took off.

At age nine, Max Parrot begged his mom and dad to buy him a snowboard. He is also the second-youngest man to win a medal in an individual event.

"I was like, this cannot be right", he told NBC Sports in 2017. "That's what really got my mind flowing on style stuff and making snowboarding different, to be honest".

"The whole way through the course I was taking it feature by feature, all the way to the end", Gerard said.

Gerard said he didn't realize just how big the Olympics are. Men's qualifying heats are scheduled for February 20 at 7:30 pm EST, with the final airing on February 23 at 8pm EST.